THE HILARY HENINGER

I am a proponent of conscious parenting. Raising my children has and continues to be one of my top priorities. I feel a tremendous responsibility in how we as parents can impact our offspring, likely the result of so much awareness around trauma and family impact. One aspect of conscious parenting that I try very hard to follow is to be present while they are sharing or wanting to engage in conversation.

As any parent knows , this is not only an important aspect of connection but also a tiring task if you are completely exhausted, uninterested in the topic or have been ‘talked at’ for the majority of your day.

But as parents, we try, and sometimes, we get lucky.

Tonight was one of those nights.

Driving my youngest to his best friends house was a conversation that I both thoroughly enjoyed and will never forget.

The boy: Mom, do you want to go Africa?

Me: Yah, I would like to go. Why, would you?

The Boy: No, I’m scared of the big animals. Same with the amazon

Me: Yah, I don’t know if I could handle the bugs in the jungle.

The boy: Yah, I DO NOT plan to go to the Amazon.

Me: How come?

The boy: There is this one bug thats really small but it swims up your urethra and the only way to get it out is to cut your penis in half and I’m not doing that. It happens all the time!

Me: **eyeballs wide**

And a hush falls over the crowd.

While I could have explained to him that it was unlikely, looked up some stats, been the ‘interested in the reality of this happening’ parent – I chose the path less travelled, because, as it turns out, sometimes being a conscious parent really is being present and just listening.

PS: As kids who were told that if we ate pop rocks and soda that we’d implode – can we really blame him?